ABSTRACT

Governors Island in New York Harbor is the place on which the jurisdictional principles of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience were delivered first in the New World with the arrival of New York’s first settlers from the Dutch Republic in 1624. That jurisprudence was the underpinning of New York’s unique ethos of diversity and pluralism. This article explores the complex juridical and cultural context of the meaning of the welcome extended to Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews in New Netherland in 1654/55. The latter group, mostly destitute Sephardic refugees from Dutch Brazil, sought shelter in New Amsterdam in September 1654 as a result of the fall of Brazil to the Portuguese. They were not welcomed for assorted reasons. Following a petition, the Sephardim received official residency in April 1655; ‘ … they shall be allowed to sail and to trade in New Netherland and also be allowed to reside and settle there’ on the basis of ‘reason and equity.’ Eighteen years earlier, the Sephardim in Dutch Brazil had been granted a license by the Dutch Governor-General Johan Maurits to build a synagogue at Recife in 1638. Construction was started in 1640. The edifice was consecrated in 1642. It was the first synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, prompting the question wherein the Americas started the jurisprudence of toleration first as a natural right and as the foundational principle for religious diversity? Restoring the Island’s historical integrity as the birthplace of New York State and the origin of the vital ethic of Tolerance as the defender and definer of American liberty would preserve the Island’s historic substance and national symbolism as a primary American and universal value for future generations. On 12 December 2015 Secretary of State John Kerry declared that ‘the fundamental values of our nation were built on Tolerance.’